Conventionally, an air conditioner controls an air blowing temperature and the like based on only an air temperature measured by a thermistor or the like. However, it is well known that the effective temperature a human body feels is varied depending on the wind velocity. For example, FIG. 12 shows that the rate of decrease in the effective temperature increases with an increase in the wind velocity. Therefore, controlling of the air conditioner taking into consideration the influence of the wind velocity as well as the air temperature is desired.
For this purpose, there is a well-know technique to control the air conditioner taking into consideration the wind velocity by measuring not only the air temperature with a temperator detector but also the wind velocity with a thermal wind velocity sensor.
In this case, however, it is required to provide both a wind velocity sensor and a temperature detector, and in addition a circuit for estimating the wind velocity from heat loss, a temperature measuring instrument for compensating, a calculating circuit for calculating the effective temperature compensated for the wind velocity and the like are also required. As a result, the arrangement of the device is complicated.
Therefore, an object of this invention is to detect the effective temperature compensated for the wind velocity by a simple arrangement in a manner that the temperature of a heating element having the same wind velocity dependence of temperature drop as that of the effective temperature drop is detected not through the process of estimating the wind velocity from heat loss due to the wind as in the case using a thermal wind velocity sensor or the like, but by measuring the wind velocity directly.